


Something Important, Something Real

by 221watson



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Multi, but they'll figure it out, they're all idiots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-03
Updated: 2013-11-03
Packaged: 2017-12-31 06:21:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1028281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221watson/pseuds/221watson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Sherlock's fall John and Greg grow closer and eventually end up in a relationship. But what happens when Sherlock comes back?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Important, Something Real

**Author's Note:**

> The title is inspired by a quotation from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451: "We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?"

Surely, John thinks, it shouldn’t be so hard to meet someone for a pint. Especially not if that someone is your friend. A friend who arrested your partner a few hours before said partner’s suicide, mind, but John knows that Lestrade hadn’t had a choice, had only done his job. Reluctantly, at that. 

The worst thing of all, maybe, is that he can’t be angry with Greg. Not really. He can’t be angry with anyone these days, really. Not even with Mycroft, whom he might have strangled if he’d had the energy to do it. This whole mess is his fault after all, in a way. But the only person John gets really angry with, at night when he can’t fall asleep or is woken up by nightmares of high buildings and pools of blood around the head of a lifeless body, is Sherlock.

So even though this is one of the last things he wants to do he gets ready in the evening, walks to their usual pub, and sits down next to Greg at the bar. There is no greeting. John can’t fathom what to say. Greg, apparently, knows that the best course of action is to order both of them a pint and say nothing.

“It was all a sham, you know,” John says after a while, looking down at his beer so he doesn’t have to look at Lestrade. “In Baskerville. He did know your name, of course he did.” He has no idea why he’s bringing this up, or at least not one he wants to think about right now. For some reason it seems important for Greg to know. Greg just nods and they lapse into silence again. 

“He wasn’t a fake.” Greg takes a sip of his pint and John finally looks at him. He even manages a small smile, even if it’s mostly false. Greg can see the difference, he knows that, but John doesn’t mind as much with him as he does with other people. 

“He wasn’t,” John agrees. If there’s one thing he knows in the world it’s that Sherlock Holmes was (is? He can’t quite shake the hope that this might all be just a sham, a horrible, terrible plot that Sherlock deemed necessary for some stupid, foolish reason) real. 

They stay a bit longer after that. It’s actually quite nice to sit there with someone who shares this knowledge of Sherlock, someone who won’t tell him that he should probably get professional help (which he already does) after several months of grieving for someone who lied to and betrayed him. It’s also quite a nice view, John can admit to himself. Only to himself, and even that only barely, because there are far too many reasons he shouldn’t be attracted to one Gregory Lestrade. Greg makes him promise to show up again next week, same time, same place. 

It becomes a habit after that. They meet every week if they can make it, drink a pint, talk about football and rugby. Greg never brings up the glances John throws his way even though he must have noticed. In return John never mentions that Greg’s taken up smoking again. Both of them have their vices. 

In the end it’s almost five months before it happens. Maybe it should be sudden, a revelation, something a bit less anti-climactic, but it almost feels like this was inevitable, somehow. Greg’s stubble is scratching slightly against his jaw and John sighs softly, leaning back against Greg’s terrible sofa, and enjoys every second of it.

Something is missing, though, and it hangs between them like some sort of ugly, unspoken truth. Sherlock’s not here. Sherlock’s dead (?) and Sherlock would have been angry (?) that John is bestowing his affections on someone else now. That’s what John thinks, at least. He doesn’t stay the night. 

“Maybe he wouldn’t have minded,” John says quietly a few weeks later when they are in bed together, curled around each other and with arms wrapped around each others’ waists. “He always had a bit of a thing for you.” He runs a hand through the strands of silver of Greg’s hair, hoping that he won’t be disillusioned. (He won’t be. Sherlock is dead. Probably. Maybe.)

As it turns out almost a year later, Sherlock doesn’t mind. After a hell of a lot of shouting (Greg), more shouting (John) and a punch in the face (also John), things slowly begin to quiet down. At least as much as they can when someone comes back from the dead. 

Sherlock is still his obnoxious self, but he does try, at least in the beginning, not to cross any lines. Sherlock being Sherlock, though, of course he does cross lines. When John wakes up in Greg’s bed to find his ex-dead best friend and ex-lover sandwiched between them, for example. Maybe it shouldn’t surprise John, but Greg isn’t too bothered by it. He does, in fact, wrap an arm around Sherlock’s waist and murmurs, “stay,” still half asleep. So Sherlock stays. 

It becomes a regular thing after that. It’s strange and it’s completely and utterly mad, but John doesn’t have any objections. That’s why he loved life with Sherlock in the first place, and now that he’s back he’s hardly going to complain about a bit of madness. Even if that madness involves his gorgeous, brilliant nutter of an ex-boyfriend somehow squeezing into the nooks and niches of his relationship with his new gorgeous, less intellectually brilliant, but sometimes no less infuriating boyfriend. 

“This isn’t exactly normal, is it?” John asks one morning when he and Greg are sitting alone in the kitchen, soft light from the windows bathing everything in an almost surreal glow. It’s fitting, John thinks.

Greg looks at him with raised eyebrows before getting up, walking over to John, and wrapping an arm around his waist to pull him close. “You lived with Sherlock bloody Holmes, John. I knew what I was getting into. You’re both utterly mad. I don’t mind.”

John gives him a mock annoyed shove, but quickly pulls him back in. “I’m serious, though. It’s almost like all three of us are in the same romantic relationship. That’s a bit weird, right?”

Humming, Greg presses a kiss to John’s lips to shut him up. “Everything’s a bit weird with him around,” he says, shrugging. “But it fits, right? God knows it’s fucking insane, but it seems to be working.”

And what can John say to that? Greg’s right. This is insane, but Sherlock thrives on the insane, and John and Greg have always been only too happy to tag along for the ride. Maybe this will all go downhill, or maybe they’ll find a way to make it work. Either way, it’s important to all of them, and they’ll work on it.

“Yeah, I suppose it is,” John says with a small smile, letting his chin rest on Greg’s shoulder. This could be something amazing, given time. He’s willing to wait.


End file.
